Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The Monster in the Maze!

Continuing on with the March 1954 issue of Adventures into Darkness #13, "The Monster in the Maze!", illustrated by Gene Fawcette, is ferocious fun, but a little on the short side, so I added the "Escape from Terrorland" maze (which I believe I may have actually posted here at THOIA in the past), as well as the 2-page text story "The Lonely Place" by John Marvin. Yes, it comes to my attention that some of you actually like and read these things... I'm posting it mainly for you full issue completists, and because it does have a couple of spooky cool illustrations to boot! One more story to go, see ya in few! PS: And be sure to see the last post about our multiple Rondo Award nominations this year in case you missed it-- if you dig THE HORRORS OF IT ALL and our HAUNTED HORROR comic book series, then please give us a vote! :)

8 comments:

This on is nuts. It just tumbles from one panel to another, more or less because the writer had to squeeze it into a few pages. But there's some great art -- the Minotaur reveal is cool, the skeletons are well done, and the hands reaching out panel are all drawn well.

Honestly -- go into a spooky place, tie a damn rope to each other! How do you loose somebody that fast? Were you not talking?

Although scarcely believable (the site has been accurately explored by archaeologists since the days of Sir Arthur Evans, now comes a Howard Thorensen and finds "the house of Asterion", as Borges would have said), the intro in the deserted palace with the very recognizable Throne has an interesting atmosphere, like the start of a "twilight zone" episode. The labyrinth part is ok, but then the story seems to have been "cut", with that very anticlimactic ending in the Asylum.

The text story was pretty good, I liked it. The tone of the text story sounds like something Poe would have written, though the master of Gothic horror would have phrased it in the language of the nineteenth century.

With a little rewording it would make a decent ghost story to tell around the campfire.

The Minotaur tale did seem rushed, though the image of the Minotaur was impressive, even if it was only shown in one panel.

I liked the minotaur reveal, too. I very rarely see good cinematic suspense in funnybook horror, but letting us in on the monster before what's-his-face realizes his own danger, distracted as he is by the corpse of his wife (and then having the guy immediately freak the hell out like a normal person instead of like the typical stalwart fifties hero), really sort of made this one seem dangerous and creepy. Frankly, even the fact that they just straight-up killed the woman off kind of came as a shock to me. It really telegraphed the futility of the situation and the asymmetry of the struggle. Well done.

Since the Minotaur is brought into the present, I almost expected the character Howard meets at the end to be Theseus! I'm not sure what I was thinking - maybe that the experience had driven him crazy too. It would have a SORT OF comic book logic to it.

I've never found the minotaur to be a particularly scary creature, at least the few films I've seen with him didn't do a very good job of making him look like anything more than a guy wearing a bull head mask... this story for once succeeds in delivering one that is at least large and menacing.

One more tale from this issue to go-- coming up next! Thanks again for the comments!

The Minotaur always makes me think of the version of him in the original CLASH OF THE TITANS, where he's killed in such an "anti-climactic" way. He might be the only Ray Harryhausen monster who's killed completely by accident. Which is dramatic in its own way, really.

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